


Satellite's Gone

by Anonymous



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, Post season finale, applied phlebotinum and dubious physics, fix-it after a fashion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 06:55:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18586075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: satellite's goneup to the sky...Michael leaves the planet.





	Satellite's Gone

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been in the works for a while, and I'd say it's canon-compliant up until... the final 10 minutes of 1x13. So no miraculous resurrections, Michael's hand isn't healed, Max is still around... you get the idea.

DAY 0

Michael leaves on a Tuesday. A Tuesday like any other, without fanfare. No meteorological disruptions. Lying in bed, Alex stares at the clock. 08:57. He wonders where Max and Isobel are. Are they holding hands in the desert, watching from a safe distance as their brother fires up the craft that will carry him away? Or are they hiding in their beds like Alex, wishing they could turn the time around, because they can’t bear to see him go? 08:58. _Give me a reason to stay,_ Michael had pleaded, but Alex couldn’t do it. Couldn’t be that reason. Not after everything that happened. Their terrible, terrible love. Michael had stardust in his soul and Alex was earthbound with a titanium leg. _Go_ , he said. 08:59. No turning back now. Commencing countdown. I’m sorry, he thinks (ten, nine, eight) If you asked me now I wouldn’t hesitate (seven six five) I would even go with you (four three two) But it’s too late now (one)

09:00 (Liftoff) He closes his eyes. Michael is gone. He’s rising higher higher higher, Earth falling away, breaking through the clouds and the stratosphere and it’s bright, so bright. Then nothing but stars and space-black night.

Alex finally drags himself out of bed in the late afternoon. He hasn’t eaten anything, but that doesn’t stop him from snagging a six-pack and hobbling outside to watch the sun sink.

He almost trips over it, the small box sitting on his porch. His hands shake when he picks it up and peers inside. His first thought is someone has left him an old cellphone, one of those bricks from the 90s with a retractable antenna. But there’s a note, a scrap of paper torn from a notebook. _This is a comm-link_ , it says in Michael’s untidy scrawl. _Use it._

Alex looks around wildly, as if he might catch a glimpse of Michael driving away in his old flatbed truck. He doesn’t, of course. Back inside, clutching the precious box, he feels solitude closing in around him. How strange, strange to think that Michael inhabits the Earth no longer. In a single, devastating break, Michael has left Alex behind—more definitively than Alex ever managed in ten years of walking and running away from _him_.

 

DAY 4

Michael has been gone several days now. Alex hasn’t used the comm-link. Hasn’t tested it, hasn’t even taken it out of the box.

He can’t bring himself to believe in it.

He can hardly get out of bed, either. He feels sick, almost as sick as he’d felt lying in hospital after the explosion, trying to reconcile himself to what he’d lost. Hollowness gnaws at his insides. He’d be nauseous if he weren’t empty. So, so empty. He picks up Michael’s box and stares into it vacantly. Which is when he notices there’s a charger tucked in beside the clunky device. Feeling a bit stupid, he plugs it into the wall. The screen lights up. _1% Battery Charging_. Alex laughs, a chuckle that comes out more like a sob. Trust Michael to leave him a phone with a dead battery, the guy can hardly remember to charge his cellphone when he’s down in his bunker tinkering away on some project, how many times has Alex had to drive out to Sander’s and bang on the manhole cover to get his attention—

Something he’ll never do again, he realizes, with a vertiginous sense of loss.

 

DAY 11

He doesn’t believe in the comm-link, but that doesn’t stop him from keeping it fully charged at all times and carrying it with him whenever he leaves the house.

He doesn’t tell anyone about it. He wonders if Michael left devices for Max and Isobel, too, but he can’t bring himself to face the Evans twins yet. Driving to the Wild Pony, he catches a glimpse of Isobel walking down the street, except she doesn’t look like Isobel at all; her hair is lank and unkempt and her clothes look slept in. He peeks at her again in his rear-view mirror, sees her face is puffy and swollen as she takes a furtive swig of acetone. He had always underestimated Isobel: she hadn’t gone to pieces after Noah; instead she’d revealed a steely resolve to keep living. But now she’s crumbling, holding Max at arm’s-length.

A fresh wave of guilt breaks over him. Michael always thought Max and Isobel didn’t need him, but he’d dared to hope that Alex might. _Give me a reason to stay._ Which makes it Alex’s fault that Isobel and Max lost him, too.

His hands are shaking when he pulls into the parking lot. He’s got a few minutes before he’s meant to meet Kyle at the bar, so he leans back and breathes the way they taught him in hospital. Inhale _one-two-three-four,_ hold _two-three-four_ , exhale _two-three-four_ , repeat.

And then the thing, the fucking device, resting innocuously on the passenger seat—it crackles to life.

— _Alex! Hey, Alex. Alex Manes. C’mon dude, can you hear me?_

His heart does a kind of pirouette in his chest. He’s trembling all over, he breaks out in a cold sweat; he can feel the beads of perspiration forming along his hairline. He stares at the thing in disbelief, is this some kind of joke—

— _If you’re asleep right now, Alex, I swear to God—_

His hands slip several times as he tries to press the ‘Talk’ button. “Th-this is Alex,” he manages to stammer, voice shaking as much as his hands. “O-o-over.”

— _About fucking time._ It’s really Michael’s voice and suddenly he can see him so clearly, with his laughing eyes and his ever-present smirk, and that hair, oh his hair.— _You don’t have to say ‘over,’_ Michael continues. _Just talk into it like a normal phone._

“You’re alive,” he says, and immediately starts crying. Because how many times has he imagined Michael’s vulnerable little craft bursting into flames as it left the atmosphere, or colliding with a meteor, or springing a leak, or—

— _Course I’m alive. I’m a genius, remember? Have a little faith._

“Are you okay?”

— _Never better._ _Space travel’s in my blood._ It’s been a long time since he’s heard this kind of enthusiasm in Michael’s voice _. Alex, the Earth is beautiful from up here. I always thought your planet was a real shithole, but once I got to the moon—_

“You’re on the _moon_?” Alex demands.

— _I was. I tried to call you, but_ —

“I didn’t realize I had to charge it,” Alex says. “I thought it didn’t work.”

— _Better late than never, I guess. But I wanted to share it with you, ’cause it’s like nothing you could imagine. Getting out of your ship, standing there, on the moon, in the Earthlight. Hey_ , Michael’s tone changes, _are you okay?_

Because Alex is crying uncontrollably now, he can’t even muffle the sounds or squeeze a word out.

— _Did something happen?_ Somehow the comm-link is transmitting concern, even though Michael’s floating in space a zillion miles away.

“’S fine,” Alex manages. His voice does that awful hyperventilating thing, when it sounds like he’s wheezing through an asthma attack. _I can’t breathe._ “I just. Miss you.”

Michael doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Alex is afraid they’ve lost the connection.

“Michael?”

— _I’m still here. But Alex, there’s some, like, space junk or something up ahead. I need to get off autopilot and steer this thing myself, okay? I’ll call again soon._

The link goes dead. And Alex, still shaking, still clutching the phone with tears and snot streaming down his face, is pretty damn sure the “space junk” is a line of bullshit because—even with the moon standing between them—he can always tell when Michael is lying. He also knows what Michael’s voice sounds like when he’s trying not to cry.

 

DAY 23

Michael attempts to call at least once a week but _time_ , as he says, _gets funny up here._

Alex asks what he means.

— _Well there’s no night and no day. And time passes more slowly for me than it does for you. You’re aging faster than me down on Earth, you know._

Alex calls bullshit on that.

— _Didn’t you ever_ _pay attention in physics?_

“Obviously not.”

— _Too busy painting your nails, huh?_ Michael laughs at him, and then he wants to know about Alex’s days at the base, what he’s doing with computers and what he had for lunch. Alex feels stupid answering, because who gives a shit what Russian server Alex hacked into yesterday, when Michael’s in _outer fucking_ _space_ exploring the cosmos, but Michael insists he really wants to know.

 

DAY 37

What Michael _doesn’t_ want to know is how much they miss him. Alex catches on quickly, after Michael cuts the link a few too many times, mumbling about turbulence ( _was_ there turbulence in space?) or space junk or any other excuse that’s just a little too _Star Trek_. He’ll ask after Max and Isobel—he didn’t give them comm-links—but he doesn’t want to hear about Isobel getting shitfaced at the Pony, screaming at Max when he arrives to take her home; nor does he want to hear about Max losing his temper at work and getting chained to desk duty. So Alex tells him about Liz’s work at the lab—as best he can understand it—and about Valenti’s weirder cases at the hospital, and about Maria installing a foosball table at the bar only to remove it a week later because too many matches devolved into fistfights.

Michael laughs. — _Don’t tell anyone about this_ , he reminds Alex at the end of almost every conversation. _Then they’ll all wanna hop on the comm-link, and, well…_

 

DAY 59

He sounds a little manic, sometimes. — _I’m a rocket ship on my way to Mars, on a collision course—_

“A _what_ course?”

— _I’m a satellite, I’m out of control—_

He’s speaking so fast Alex can hardly understand him, much less get a word in.

— _I’m a sex machine, ready to reload—_

“Michael, slow down—”

— _I installed a cutting-edge sound system_ , Michael says breathlessly. _So any alien transmitters out there, they’ll pick up something good._

 

DAY 70

Michael has been gone more than two months ( _Earth months_ , Alex reminds himself) before Alex dares to ask if he’s any closer to finding his home-planet. But, as it turns out, after several navigational errors, Michael has found his way to Mars instead.

— _There’s water on Mars!_ he gloats. _I still have to test it in my lab, it’s probably contaminated with all sorts of shit, but it’s water, all right. H-2-motherfuckin’-O. So maybe humanity has a shot out here. Not that you deserve it_ , he adds, a little nastily.

“Great, I’ll give NASA a heads-up tomorrow,” Alex says, sitting on the edge of his bed and beginning to unfasten his prosthesis. Maria had set him up with a date for tonight, but he’d bailed when Michael’s voice came through the comm-link just as he was locking his front door.

— _And guess who’s here!_

“Who?” Alex asks, incredulously.

— _David Bowie! Turns out he was one of us after all. An alien! He never died, either, just hopped back in his ship and flew home._

“You’re joking, right?” Alex says dubiously, and peals of laughter reach him through the comm-link.

— _Well, yeah, but you believed me for like a second, didn’t you?_

“Maybe,” Alex admits. “I mean, what do I know, a year ago I didn’t believe in aliens at all.”

— _I wish you were here, man. There’s nothing like listening to “Life on Mars” when you’re actually_ on _Mars. No other life up here, though. Just me._

“Is it lonely?” Alex winces, wishing he could take the question back. For a moment there’s nothing but static coming through the link, and he half-expects Michael to cut the connection.

— _It’s… harsh,_ Michael says at last. _I never realized back ho— back on Earth, I mean, how fragile our atmosphere is. And it’s the only thing protecting the planet from all this.. space. Without it—_ Alex can picture him shrugging— _nothing exists. On a molecular level my biology might be different from yours, but I couldn’t survive out in the open any more than you could._

“Your planet must be special then, like Earth.”

— _I guess._ Michael sounds very very far away all of a sudden. Which he is, Alex reminds himself; sometimes he forgets just how far. The comm-link is deceptive that way.

 

DAY 79

Liz and Maria tell him he needs to take control of his life again. That he’s come down with a bad case of arrested development since Michael left.

Alex thinks, idly, there’s very little point to carpe diem when people live for so long, anyway. He pictures his civilian life unspooling before him. Decades of it, endless, empty, vacant. Solitary.

“You told him to go,” Liz reminds him bluntly. She can be harsh sometimes, Liz, but he relies on her honesty. He loves her for it, except when he hates her for it, like he does now, a little. He wonders how many people blame him for Michael’s departure, because he’s starting to think Liz numbers among them. She misses her science buddy; Michael was the only one who could keep up with her, and vice versa. Apparently this is Alex’s fault, too, that Liz has nobody to cackle over unintelligible chemistry jokes with. “ _Last night a hypnotist convinced me I was a soft, malleable metal with an atomic number of 82. I’m easily lead_.” “ _A photon checks into his hotel and is asked if he needs any help with his luggage. ‘No, I’m traveling light_.’” They were fucking insufferable sometimes, the pair of them.

Alex wants to shout at her: _It was too much responsibility, he asked too much of me! How could I live with myself, if I made him stay? My family killed his family. I had no right to hold him back, I’m not enough._ But he says nothing, just picks miserably at his cuticles.

If he’d never given Michael the final piece of alien glass, if they’d never driven to Caulfield Prison, if…

“You need to get laid,” says Liz. “Get some casual sex under your belt. Apparently that was Michael’s coping mechanism while you were away. I wouldn’t know, thank God.”

 

DAY 92

— _Gonna be out of the galaxy soon. Bye-bye Milky Way._

“Mm,” Alex says. He thinks, aimlessly, of trick-or-treating as a child, when his mother was still around. Milky Ways were Flint’s favorite Halloween candy; he used to steal them from Alex’s pillowcase until Alex cried and tattled, and their mom made Flint give the Milky Ways back.

Michael laughs, and, not for the first time, Alex realizes he’s inadvertently voiced his train of thought aloud. — _I’ve never actually had a Milky Way_ , Michael says, and Alex feels a pang for his childhood-that-never-was. _What’s it taste like?_

“Sort of… nougat-y?” Alex hazards. “There’s, like, caramel in there too, and it’s covered in chocolate. And there’s another kind, Milky Way Midnight, that has vanilla nougat instead of chocolate. No idea how any of that relates to the thing in the sky.”

— _Milkshakes are named after the Milky Way too_ , Michael volunteers. _Liz told me that, and she oughta know, family business and all. The ancient Greeks named the galaxy “Milky Way” ’cause they thought it looked like a milky patch of sky above the Earth at night._

Alex always finds it soothing when Michael explains science things. He’s a much more patient instructor than Liz, who talks too fast and then gets frustrated when her listeners can’t keep up. “Oh, just google it,” she’d say crossly, when Alex interrupted her with too many questions about her lab work. Michael, though, Michael never seems to mind.

“Is there a story behind it?”

— _There’s a myth._

Alex hears a clink, like Michael’s opening a bottle of beer. He imagines him in his spaceship, boots up on the console, cowboy had tipped back, beer in hand, settling in to explain the cosmos.

— _According to the Greeks, Zeus brought his baby son Heracles home to Mount Olympus, and told his wife Hera to feed him. But Hera said no, ’cause Heracles was half-mortal, the result of one of Zeus’s affairs—guy really got around—and she wasn’t nursing somebody else’s son._

“Fair, I guess,” Alex says. He imagines old Sheriff Valenti bringing baby Rosa home and presenting her to his wife, the present Sheriff Valenti, and making the same request. Mrs. Valenti would have kicked his ass, probably.

— _So Zeus waits till Hera’s asleep, then he goes and sticks Heracles on her breast. But Heracles—Roman name Hercules, by the way—sucks so hard that he wakes her up, and Hera pushes him off. Her milk sprays across the heavens and there forms… the Milky Way._

“That’s… a really weird story,” Alex comments, wrinkling his nose. “Ew?”

— _Yeah, well. Lucky for Heracles, he still had a mother back on Earth, and she raised him. Lived to see all the cool heroic shit he did, too._

“Oh,” Alex says. Sorrow settles over him like a heavy blanket.

 

DAY 103

— _I’d kill for some Crashdown fries right now,_ Michael remarks.

 

DAY 112

Michael calls when Alex is on his way home from physical therapy, sweaty and aching and bad-tempered. But Michael has a knack for dispersing even his stormiest moods.

— _I have to work out all the time,_ Michael tells him, _like an interstellar gym rat. Your muscles atrophy really fast without gravity, so unless I wanna waste away, I have to go at it hard, like, constantly._

Alex pictures Michael sweaty with exertion, cheeks flushed, a few stray curls plastered to his forehead. Shirtless, a trickle of sweat running down his sternum.

— _Where are you now? What are you doing?_ Michael asks.

“I’m driving. Just finished another round of PT.”

— _Are you sore? Wish I could give you a massage._

“Michael.” He’s suddenly having a difficult time focusing on the road.

— _I bet you’re still over-compensating with your left side. You gotta trust the prosthetic to do its job, and if it’s not, go back in there and demand a better one._

“I’m working on it.”

— _If I were there, I’d go with you._

“You hate hospitals.” His voice is small.

— _Yeah, whatever. I’d still go._ Michael clears his throat. _I can’t stop thinking about you. Like, I’m floating in space, staring out the window at the most beautiful nebulae—_

“Nebul-what?” Alex says, though he doesn’t really care because his mind is suddenly teaming with images. Michael, rolling onto his side, panting, breathless, too sex-drunk to speak. Michael, half-asleep, tugging Alex into his arms. Michael, sitting back on his heels as he reaches for a condom and—

— _Clouds of dust and gas in space. Some are created by the explosion of a dying star, and some are new stars just beginning to form. I’m so far away, Alex, farther than you can imagine, but—. I think all the time. And when I think, I think about you. So, basically, I think about you all the time._

Tears spring to his eyes. Every time he cries for Michael, he thinks that’s it, that’s the last time, no more tears left to cry.

— _And I’ve got, like, the biggest blue space balls._

Alex laughs and wipes his nose.

— _Not even kidding. I want you so bad right now. Are you wearing your uniform?_

Alex swerves across the yellow line. “Christ, Guerin, you almost made me crash.”

— _You haven’t called me that in a while._

He decides, for his own safety and that of his fellow motorists, to pull over. He turns onto a gravel side-road and parks under the shadow of a large tree. “And no, I’m not wearing it,” he tells Michael. “PT, remember?”

— _Right. Well, I don’t really care what you’re wearing, ’cause in my head I’m taking it off right now._

Alex gives his surrounding another furtive glance, and slips a hand under his sweatpants.

— _Then I’d blow you, ’cause I miss the sounds you make and the way you pull my hair._

Alex can almost feel Michael’s mouth on him. The wet heat, the slightest graze of teeth. The way he’d drag his tongue over the head of Alex’s cock, looking up at him through his eyelashes.

— _I wanna do everything with you right now, but fuck—_ Michael’s breathing has turned ragged— _I keep dreaming about the last time before I left. The way you rode me. Hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen._

Alex remembers too. Michael straining beneath him, fingers clutching at his hips, as Alex slowly, slowly, slowly sank down on him. “I like the view from up there,” he murmurs.

— _Love it when you take charge. Use me how you want, like I’m your toy._ Michael’s words slur together. The dirty talk, it’s never calculated with him, Alex knows. Sex with Michael was honest, sometimes wrenchingly so. No artifice, no deception. Michael loved generously and unreservedly when they were in bed together.

Alex takes a breath. “I like when you lose control,” he tells Michael. “When your powers get away from you, and things start flying around. And I like it,” he continues, “that the only time you lose control is when you’re with me.”

A sort of groan reaches him through the comm-link. Alex spits into his hand and redoubles his efforts.

— _Still so many things I wanted to do with you_ , Michael grunts. _Things we coulda tried._

“Like what?”

— _Wish you’d been inside me more. And I always wanted you to sit on my face._

Alex is suddenly very close. “I-I’d suffocate you,” he says breathlessly. “And my leg—”

— _I could hold you in place with my brain while I eat you out._

“Oh, shit,” Alex says, and comes.

— _Alex, you close? I’m gonna co—_

“Just did,” he says, and then he’s treated to the exquisite sounds of Michael gasping and cursing as he does the same, light-years away.

 

DAY 141

— _A degenerate white dwarf sitting on a red branch_.

“Excuse me?” Alex says.

— _What I’m looking at right now. How’s that for space poetry?_

“Might be considered offensive in some circles.”

— _Context, baby. Liz would get it._

 

DAY 153—DAY 178

Go figure they can only talk about the hard stuff with galaxies of space-time between them:

— _Max feels guilty, and I get that, but then I have to listen to him whining about how much pain he’s in over my shitty childhood. And I’m like, dude, don’t make_ me _console_ you _over_ my _shitty childhood. He’s never really got me, you know? Can’t decide if I’m a confused homo clinging to vestigial straightness, or if you’re just the glitch in my code._

Alex tells him how he felt when his mother left. “And with her gone, it wasn’t just that I was completely at my dad’s mercy, but the whole Native thing went with her too, and I never really got to know that side of me.”

— _The priest who did the exorcism on me, he put a bunch of cigarettes out on my arm, and the burns were in the shape of the cross. If they hadn’t healed, those burns, I probably would’ve added more, made a satanic pentagram or something, just so I wouldn’t be stuck with a crucifix for the rest of my life._

“The night of the school reunion, with you—that was the first time I’d felt anything since I lost my leg. It was like they’d amputated my balls along with it... I thought I was broken, that I’d never get turned on for anyone or anything. But you kissed me, and suddenly I was seventeen again...”

— _I did bad by Maria. It could’ve happened, maybe, in some other universe. But in this one… she was lonely, I was lonely, and she still thinks it’s her fault._

“I wish I’d tried harder in high school. Taken some AP classes, scraped better grades. If I’d given more of a shit, I might’ve had more options than the military.”

— _Don’t get me wrong I like sex,_ really _like it, but mostly I was just killing time and testing my limits._

—Maybe I wouldn’t have cut it as a musician anyway.

— _I think—I mean, who knows—but I might’ve been, like. Drinking too much. Back on Earth. Fucking sue me, I like feeling good. And sometimes that was the only thing that made me feel good._

“I’ve never forgiven myself for what he did to you. To your hand. Because—no, don’t interrupt me, Guerin—I wanted to give you somewhere safe, but I ended up giving you the opposite of safe. I wish… honestly, sometimes I wish Kyle had killed him.”

— _My mom was so pretty. Blonde hair, kinda like Isobel. And her smile… God. You see it and you can’t help but smile back. I miss her. Is it weird to miss someone who was only yours for a few minutes?_

“It was an IED. I was never meant to leave the city that day, I was supposed to be training the local guys in encryption technology. But one of the squads was having trouble with their laptop outside the walls, so I went.”

— _My biggest fear is bad things happening to the people I love, and not being able to save them. Isobel and Max. You. But then, after all the shit that went down last year, there were so many more people to love. Like Liz and Maria. Hell, I’d take a non-fatal bullet for Valenti. (Don’t tell him I said that.) A part of me couldn’t cope, I guess. Loving that many people._

 

DAY 196

— _I almost fell into a sun_ , Michael reports.

Alex loses his lunch. Chokes on the bite of sandwich he’d just taken, knocks his plate over. When he’s finally done gagging and coughing, his voice emerges as a ragged croak. “You _what_?”

— _Almost got caught in its orbit, and then I would’ve been a goner. A star of that size exerts a hella powerful_ _gravitational pull._ He sounds pretty chipper about the whole thing, which makes Alex want to reach through the comm-link and throttle him. — _No biggie, though._

“Fuck you.” Alex is seething. For Michael to jauntily recount near-death escapades as he floats beyond the outer reaches of terrestrial science, like he’s some devil-may-care Captain Kirk, with a lifetime of public-access syndication ahead of him—

Apparently he’s said something to this effect aloud, because Michael is laughing. — _Well, I don’t think I’ll be listening to “Here Comes the Sun” for a while, that’s for sure._

“Over,” Alex says, and turns the comm-link face down. He can hear Michael calling his name, but he walks out his front-door, gets in his SUV, and drives away.

 

DAY 204

Alex finally ends his dry spell with an ex-Marine whom he meets—where else?—at the Pony. It’s a relief to talk to someone else who knows what it was like in Baghdad and Mosul, who can’t erase memories of friends getting blown to bits, who still prays to anyone who might be listening that those really were militants they’d gunned down and not innocent civilians.

They have sex a few times, sex of the non-penetrative sort, because it makes Alex feel powerful, withholding. It’s decent; good, even, when he manages to mute the comparisons with a certain curly-haired extra-terrestrial. He keeps his prosthesis on and his guard up. When it’s time for the guy to move on, Alex gives him a fake phone number.

He feels defensive about the whole episode, even though Maria gives him a “yeahhh boy” and Kyle tries to high-five him. When Michael calls, he doesn’t pick up.

 

DAY 219

He’s hanging out at the Crashdown with Liz when somebody puts a quarter in the jukebox and “Across the Universe” filters through the speakers.

_Limitless undying love_  
_Which shines around me like a million suns  
_ _It calls me on and on across the universe_

Cue the waterworks. Big ugly sobs, never mind the high-school kids looking on, wide-eyed, from their booth.

Liz pats his shoulder and hands him a napkin. She knows there’s a song for every broken heart. “Mrs. Potters Lullaby” still makes her laugh and cry at the same time.

— _Aw, the Bowie cover is so much better_ , Michael says later. _I could never get behind the, like, Sanskrit chanting in the original. Who did the Beatles think they were, anyway?_

 

DAY 241

— _How’re Max and Isobel?_ Michael asks hesitantly.

“Max has Liz, so obviously that’s a positive thing.” Alex pauses, wondering how honest he should be. “I don’t think they’re as close as they used to be,” he hedges.

— _Well, Max killed Noah_ , Michael points out. _Isobel just needs time to process._

“Maybe,” Alex says. “But—it seems like it might be more than that. Like the twin thing between them, that psychic connection they had? They lead pretty separate lives these days.”

— _Huh,_ says Michael. _They were always so co-dependent, you know? Never really needed anyone except each other. Maybe it’s a good thing._

“Maybe,” Alex says.

He’s carried his guilt for months now, his shoulders drooping under the weight of Michael’s absence. All the same, he simmers over Max and Isobel growing up in such ostentatious privilege, while Michael was shunted from one abusive home to another until he finally decided he was better off sleeping in his truck. Michael may have forgiven them a thousand times over, just grateful they were safe, but Alex isn’t so generous. He thinks Michael got a raw fucking deal and the picture-perfect Evans twins still have a lot to atone for. Max especially; the thought of Isobel makes him squeamish after the horrors Noah put her through. But still. There’s a piece of his heart so damaged by war that not even Michael could heal it, and it’s this calcified shard of muscle that believes Max and Isobel deserve their misery.

He says, “Or maybe the twins were really triplets all along, and they’re only just realizing it now.”

 

DAY 269

“Do you think you’re getting close? To home?”

— _Well, I think my spaceship knows which way to go, alien technology and all, it’s kinda built into the console. But…_

“What?”

— _There’s only so many times you can blast “Don’t Stop Me Now” into space and feel like a badass before you start wondering what the hell you’re really doing._

“What are you talking about? I thought this was what you’d dreamed of, your whole life.”

— _I spent my childhood wishing my alien family would turn up and bring me home. When I finally realized they were never gonna show, I decided to rebuild the ship and find my own way back. Even after I found my mom, I hoped—. But maybe there’s no going back, maybe there never was, and now I’m just burning up my fuse in the middle of great big nothing._

“What do you mean?” His voice has gone high with fear. “What do you mean, burning up? What fuse?”

— _Chill. The fuse is fine. Fuck, I dunno, Max was always the one for metaphors. I’m just…_

“What?”

Michael cuts the link, leaving Alex clutching the phone to his chest like a life-line. Like he could reel Michael back in through sheer willpower. But Michael is the one who can move things with his mind, not him.

 

DAY 293

Two-hundred and ninety-three days after Michael left the planet, they speak for the last time.

Michael is telling him about antimatter. — _Matter is composed of particles. Every particle of ordinary matter has a corresponding antiparticle, or partner. These partners have the same mass, but opposite electric charge. A collision between a particle and its antiparticle leads to their mutual annihilation._

“That’s sad,” Alex says dully.

— _No, it’s not sad at all! Annihilation releases energy that becomes available for heat or work. If entropy is disorder, energy gone to waste, then the mutual annihilation of a particle and its partner creates more_ _energy for the universe. Did you know there’s a whole fountain of antimatter in the Milky Way?_

“Michael.”

— _Yeah?_

“I wish you were here.”

There’s a long silence on the other end. When Michael finally speaks, his voice is ragged. — _I would have stayed for you. If you’d wanted me._

“I did, I do! But it was too much to ask, for me to be your reason. It wasn’t fair!” He wonders if he’ll ever be done crying over Michael Guerin. All the tears he’s shed, he’s turning into a pillar of salt. “After everything that happened—I kept waiting for you to wake up and hate me. My dad broke your hand, he killed your mom and the rest of your people—”

— _Technically, I killed them_ , Michael says flatly.

“That’s horseshit, and you know it. My dad killed them. And if I were you, Michael, if I were you—I don’t know if I could wake up next to that man’s son everyday without hating him, too.”

— _Yeah, so we’re tangled up in all these terrible memories, the worst moments of each other’s lives—so the fuck what? I still love you, don’t I?_

“I can’t be your only tether to a planet you hate, I’m not enough—”

— _The whole universe can be inside one person._ Michael rarely cries; he’s the type to clench his jaw and hold grief captive in his throat while his eyes swim with tears. Fighting with all his might to keep them from falling. From the sound of his voice, he’s stopped fighting. — _You’ve always been enough for me._

Alex listens to the smothered sobs coming through the comm-link. He bites down on his knuckle.

— _I want my mom_ , Michael chokes out. Sounding so young, so helpless, that Alex’s heart rips in two. He thinks that this, _this_ is the worst moment of his life. — _But you’re what I’ve got, and that’s all I need._

“So why didn’t you stay?”

— _Because I’m not enough for_ you _._

Alex wants to scream. They’ve always circled each other like this, mismatched satellites flung out of orbit into the unknown. Ever trying, always failing, to close the distance. And now Michael is so far away it’s not just distance, it’s _time itself_ separating them.

Alex lets go.

“I love you,” he tells Michael. “I love you, and I wanted you to stay, here, with me. You’re my family. My home. I told you to go because it seemed like the right thing to do.”

— _I wish…_ Michael’s voice sounds like the universe tearing apart. _Oh, Alex. I wish I hadn’t listened to you._

 

DAY 327

Alex has closed out his tour, tied up his loose ends, and waved his last goodbye to Uncle Sam. After more than a decade of belonging to his country, the honorably discharged Captain Manes belongs to himself, his life his own again. He just wishes he knew what the hell to do with it.  

He could join the police force.

He could become a private consultant.

He could turn mercenary hacker, selling government secrets to the highest bidder.

He could take his guitar out of storage and record music on GarageBand.

He drives out to the desert. Michael’s airstream is exactly as he left it, none the worse for being abandoned the better part of a year. The lawn chairs out front have begun to rust.

Alex moves in.

Not intentionally, not at first. He lets himself in with his key and allows the memories to wash over him. The first time he followed Michael inside. How they’d devoured each other. Michael had dragged his shirt over his head and practically flung Alex down on the bed, looming over him like some great jungle cat waiting to pounce. Alex scrabbled to undo his belt and get his pants open in the sudden race to undress. Michael won. Slid right out of his jeans and stood there, all tousled and glowing, sinewy with muscle and hard, so hard, for Alex. The moment of truth came when he worked Alex’s pants down his legs. But there was no gasp, no recoil, no look of revulsion, none of the reactions Alex had braced himself for. Michael just lifted the prosthesis gently, cradling it in his hands like he was admiring the workmanship, and asked if Alex wanted it off or on. He watched closely while Alex took it off, like he was memorizing the process for his own edification. The moment it was set aside, he covered Alex’s body with his, and showed him what a difference ten years could make.

Alex lies down on the bed, unmade for 327 days, and buries his face in the pillow. Inhales deeply. He thinks there’s a hint of Michael still ingrained in the fabric, but he might be imagining it. A fine layer of dust coats the surfaces; the diagrams and calculations tacked to the walls have begun to curl and turn yellow. Alex looks for the photographs—Michael, Max and Isobel mugging for the camera at prom—Michael and Alex holding their guitars, teenage desert troubadours—Michael and Alex sitting together at Alex’s 28th birthday party, legs touching, heads inclined toward each other; a sneaky cellphone photo snapped by Isobel that Michael had developed—but they’re gone. Michael must have taken them, and Alex is glad for that.

He falls asleep in Michael’s bed and doesn’t wake till dusk. His body feels so heavy with memory and longing that he can’t bring himself to move. He stays the night. And the next. And then he’s bringing a few essentials over from the cabin.

 

DAY 342

It’s a bit like sliding into Michael’s skin. At the end of the day, he leaves Alex outside the airstream like a lonely dog. Inside he becomes Michael, eating at his table, drinking his beer. He falls asleep and dreams as Michael, a satellite amongst the stars. In the morning he has to become Alex again, but at least he has Michael to look forward to in the evening.

 

DAY 365

Alex sits outside the airstream, eyes closed, face turned up to the weak sunlight breaking through the clouds. He hears the crunch of footsteps, and wonders which well-meaning friend has come to plead, argue, or bargain with him today. He opens his eyes. There’s a figure striding towards him, still some distance away. A wide-brimmed hat, a hint of swagger around the hips. Nearer and nearer. Alex gets to his feet, takes a few unsteady steps forward. Not trusting his eyes until he can make out the left hand that never healed properly, the hand shattered by his father, on the best and worst day of his life, the day everything began and ended and began again, because that’s the way life worked.

“Hey darlin’,” Michael drawls. “Miss me?”

Alex punches him right in his smiling face.

 

DAY 365.5

There’s a bag of frozen peas for Michael’s black eye and a washcloth for Alex’s bruised knuckles. There are kisses and accusations, recriminations and promises. They shrug off their shirts and lie down on the bed, nose to nose, hands clutching, stroking, mapping each other’s bodies. Alex runs his palm over Michael’s chest; he’s golden and tawny as ever, so he must have thrived under those faraway suns. “I don’t understand,” he murmurs at last. “It was a one-way ticket, not a round trip. You said there was no return flight. How did you get home?”

“Recycling fuel, converting solar power, you know, that sort of thing,” Michael says carelessly. “And in the end, I didn’t go so far I couldn’t turn around.” He kisses the tip of Alex’s nose. Alex basks in the casual intimacy of it, tilts his head up for a kiss. Michael’s lips are hair’s-breadth away when suddenly his sluggish brain comes back online and starts beeping at him. Incessantly. Code: Error.

His brain summons, collates, and reviews the data:

_Standing there, on the moon, in the Earthlight._

_There’s water on Mars._

_The most beautiful nebulae._

_I almost fell into a sun._

_A fountain of antimatter in the Milky Way._

He pulls back slightly and takes Michael’s face in his hands. “Michael,” he says sternly. “Did you…”

Michael has the grace to look ashamed of himself.

“You…” He’s lost for words. He wants to laugh. He wants to cry. He wants to blacken Michael’s other eye. He wants to cocoon himself in Michael’s arms and never emerge again. A bubble of hilarity rises in his chest and then he must be hyperventilating because Michael sits them up and presses their foreheads together.

“Breathe. Breathe with me.”

Alex does as he’s told. Inhale _one-two-three-four,_ hold _two-three-four_ , exhale _two-three-four_ , repeat. It takes a while for his breathing to steady, and when it does he shoves Michael back so he can glare at him without going cross-eyed. “You fucking. Alien bastard,” he manages.

Michael grimaces.

“You never left,” Alex confirms. “This whole year, you were just—making shit up? What the fucking hell, Guerin—”

“Don’t call me that,” Michael says. He looks so young, eyes enormous, mouth trembling. “Please, Alex, don’t call me that.”

“Where—where even were you? All this time?”

“I—”

“Don’t you have any idea how _terrified_ I was, thinking about you up there all alone? The scenarios that played out in my head on loop, every single night, all the ways you might have died? How could you let us think—Max—Isobel— _me_ —” The reality of it is so absurd, he’s gagging on his own words. “I spent a year—a whole goddamn _year_ —beating myself up for letting you go, for letting you think _anything_ could be more important than this— _us—_ and _you…_ I can’t—how _could_ you—what a fucking selfish stunt to pull. _Michael._ ”

“It wasn’t a stunt.”

“No? What the hell happened then? Where _were_ you?” Alex grabs him by the shoulders. He reaches deep inside himself for his captain’s voice, the voice that gives orders while missiles rain down from the sky and reduce entire cities to rubble. “This is your one chance. No more bullshit. No more lies. Tell me the truth, or I walk right now. I swear to God I will. This is _it._ ”

“Space junk,” Michael says. The anguished look in his eyes almost makes Alex forget how fucking _furious_ he is right now. But not quite.

“ _Space junk_?” he repeats coldly.

“Debris. Waste. Garbage. Space junk. The solar system is full of it. Old satellites. Spent rocket stages. All the fragments from their disintegration and collisions.”

“So?”

“The Earth’s orbit is almost impassable, the risk of collision is so high.”

“What happened?” His voice softens slightly.

“I did leave, Alex, I really did.” Michael reaches for his hands; almost without thinking, Alex laces their fingers together. “I’d calculated everything right, my ship was working, I was almost through, almost _out_ —” He draws a ragged breath. “Then I’m hit with some kind of fragment—blew a bullet-hole through my radiator panel. It was like being… sandblasted. I barely made it back through the atmosphere in one piece. Splashed down in the Hudson Bay somewhere.”

“Oh, Michael—”

This time Michael is the one to jerk away. His hands bunch into fists as he begins to cry in earnest.

“Michael—”

“Fucking _humans_ ,” Michael spits, suddenly livid. “Grabbing up everything you can, bleeding it dry, leaving piles and piles of trash everywhere, to hell with the consequences. First you pollute your oceans and your atmosphere; now you’ve clogged the whole solar system with your shit. I couldn’t get out.”

_I couldn’t get out._

“And I couldn’t come home, either,” Michael continues after a few minutes. His eyes are red and teary, but the storm of weeping has ended as quickly as it began. “You’d told me to go; what was I supposed to do, crawl back to Roswell? Nah. I had to do… something. I tried calling you a couple times and you didn’t answer, and then, when you finally did I just—started talking. And even though I made up some crazy stories for you, it felt real, in a way. ’Cause that’s where my brain was. Up there. Traveling. Infinite.” He inhales shakily. “I felt close to my mom, too.”

Alex nods. Forgiveness at the tip of his tongue.

“I mean, really I was just in Canada,” Michael acknowledges. “I’ll tell you later, if you wanna know. It was… Cold. Beautiful. Vast. A little like the surface of the moon, maybe. Alex, I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Alex says, and forgives him.

 

**∞**

“24 hours,” Michael pleads. “Just 24 hours, then I’ll face the music.”

Late afternoon. Once Alex forgave him, Michael fell asleep with the sudden deflated exhaustion of a toddler after a screaming fit, impossible to awaken. Alex dozed a little, forcing his eyes open every few minutes to reassure himself Michael was still there. Then Michael woke up and scarfed down the leftover pizza in the fridge, along with a 40 and half a bottle of acetone. He put his arms around Alex and they stood there a long, long time, just holding each other and breathing. Loath to shatter their privacy but feeling the tug of the outside world, Alex had eventually suggested they see Max and Isobel. Michael had disagreed.

“Please?” Michael nuzzles into his neck. Nobody had bothered putting on a shirt through all the sound and fury of their confrontation, nor in the sudden calm of reconciliation that followed. Michael’s stubble scrapes over his skin as he ducks his head to kiss along Alex’s clavicle. “Just wanna be quiet with you for a while.”

Alex shivers.

Michael’s hands slide down his abdomen and he hooks his fingers through Alex’s belt loops. “Did you spend a lot of time with Valenti while I was gone?”

“You’re really gonna ask me that?”

Michael grunts but doesn’t pursue the line of inquiry. He just drops his hands to Alex’s ass and squeezes possessively.

“You’re such a Neanderthal, Guerin.” He’s biting his lip, trying not to smile.

“Whatever.”

As usual, Michael gets out of his clothes first. He kicks his jeans away, and the sound of his heavy belt buckle hitting the ground sends a jolt of electricity through Alex’s nervous system. He can’t put on any kind of show for Michael, not when he has to sit down on the bed to take off his pants and unfasten the prosthesis, but Michael just watches him with heavy-lidded eyes, chest rising and falling rapidly. He stalks forward when Alex is done and drags him up by the elbows, taking Alex’s weight against his chest. Looking so kissable, with his errant curls and parted lips. So that’s exactly what Alex does, kisses him, and suddenly he’s seventeen again, back in the UFO Emporium, making out with Michael Guerin for the very first time. Past and present blur together; there’s the same eagerness, delight and discovery and wild reckless joy. But present is better, Alex thinks, giving himself a mental shake as he twists his tongue along Michael’s. Thank god for being twenty-eight; thank god for being twenty-eight and knowing better. No more secrets, no more running to opposite ends of the universe to escape each other.

“Remember—” Alex breaks away, and inhales an enormous lungful of air. Michael has one hand resting on his neck, the other grips his waist, and he’s grinding into him slightly. They’re both resisting the frenzy that so often overtakes them during sex. No biting, no shoving, no race to the finish line. The chaotic urgency has settled into a comforting hum. Leisurely, luxurious. The feel of Michael’s skin against his. The texture of those irrepressible curls. No, there’s nothing more than this.

“Remember…?” Michael prompts, tilting his head back slightly.

“Oh.” Michael’s hard-on is nudging against his hip. “Remember... months ago we were talking, I was driving home from PT, and you said—”

“I remember.” Michael manages to look at once warm and very, very wicked. “I’m gonna get on my back,” he says, maneuvering them towards the bed. “And you, soldier, you’re gonna hop up here—” He stretches out and Alex clambers over him, moving to straddle his chest and balancing, a little precariously, on his good knee. Michael’s eyes, scorching hot, roam over his body, lingering on the head of his cock, bobbing just a few inches away from his mouth. Michael licks his lips; Alex shudders, and right on cue, a drop of precum lands on Michael’s chin. They laugh, and Michael sticks out his tongue to catch it. Then his eyes darken. “Okay,” he says. “I’m gonna try something—tell me if you don’t like it and I’ll stop—just relax—”

It’s subtle, Alex can’t really put words to it, he feels a shift in the air, a slight change in its consistency, maybe—… But the incipient ache in his good leg, bearing all his weight, begins to dissipate. His damaged leg, though it juts out uselessly as ever, feels less lopsided and ungainly, as his balance is gently righted. Michael is holding him there, supporting him, with his _mind._

“Okay?” Michael asks, the only sign of exertion a bead of sweat running down his temple.

“Yeah,” Alex breathes. “Yeah…”

And then Michael sucks the head of his cock into his mouth. Alex will deny any undignified sounds he makes later; right now, he can do little else but _feel_. Michael teases him with his tongue for a moment, then wraps his hands around Alex’s thighs and tugs him forward a little, taking him inch by inch into his mouth.

His balance holds. “Michael,” he gasps. “Fuck…” His fingers tangle in Michael’s hair and Michael rumbles in approval, relaxing his throat a little more. Opening up, taking him in. Giving Alex control. Alex fucks his mouth slowly, the supportive air giving him the leverage he needs to slide almost all the way out before pushing back in again. Michael presses his tongue to the underside of his cock. He’s flushed and his eyes are tearing up slightly but he looks… smug. Pleased with himself. _Alien bastard_ , Alex thinks fondly.

“I wish you could see how you look,” he pants. “Fuck, Michael, you’re too…”

Michael cups his balls and sucks him in harder and faster. Alex’s vision is beginning to blot out. Dark spots and a vague impression of stars. And then Michael pulls away. Alex must make some kind of pathetic, indignant sound, because he chuckles.

“Uh-uh,” Michael says hoarsely, and coughs. “You were getting close, and there’s more I wanna do to you, Captain.”

He isn’t so discreet this time. Alex feels himself propelled forward another few inches and without further ado he’s dropped down on Michael’s face and impaled on his tongue.

Alex shouts. He slams his hands against the wall of the airstream. He curses like the most foul-mouthed drill sergeant. He shakes so violently he might be levitating, he’s not sure, the only thing he’s certain of is Michael’s tongue. Michael has always been… uninhibited when it comes to sex. Doing things that Alex blushes to contemplate in public. But it’s the combination of wild abandon and single-minded commitment to Alex’s pleasure—and the otherworldly, slightly unnerving effect of his powers—that sends Alex spiraling to new heights of sublimity.

Michael’s not through with him yet, though, and Alex isn’t through with Michael. There’s a brief intermission for lube and, with a pang of loss and relief, Alex feels his own gravity again. Michael, a mess of spit and sweat and matted hair, takes a gulp of acetone to steady himself from the sustained exertion of his powers. Then he settles back quietly. Eyes following Alex’s every move. Alex slicks Michael up with wet, slippery fingers and reaches behind, checks that he’s ready to take him—a sight that has Michael choking out a breathless “ _fuck,_ Alex.” He shifts his hips, guides Michael to him, and takes him inside ever so slowly.

It’s… a lot. He doesn’t want to cry, or think cosmic thoughts about completeness or two-in-oneness. So as he adjusts, he drags his fingers through the fine hair on Michael’s chest and rubs over his nipples—something guaranteed to make Michael yelp and snap them out of this awed reverence. Michael squawks—right on cue—and hauls Alex forward. He’s like a furnace, Michael, heat pouring off his skin. Alex plasters sloppy wet kisses over his neck and shoulders. Michael smiles, laughs when Alex licks away the sweat gathering in the hollow of his throat; his hips stutter, and Alex remembers what they’re about. He pushes himself up, hands braced on Michael’s shoulders. “Hold still,” he commands, and begins to move. Michael is vibrating beneath him, an elemental force of power and energy just barely contained by his skin. And yet he does as he’s told, lets Alex use him however he likes, eyes screwed up and hands fisted in the sheets.

The airstream rattles, and something topples over in the kitchen. Looking down at Michael’s strained face, Alex feels a surge of triumph. _I like it when you lose control._

“Can I touch you now?” Michael wants to know. He sounds like gravel.

“Please,” Alex groans.

He doesn’t last, nerves already stretched to the breaking point by the exquisite torture of Michael’s mouth. He clenches and comes all over Michael’s stomach. “That’s it, love,” Michael murmurs, or maybe it’s something else, he’s not sure. He rides Michael dreamily, the aftershocks of his orgasm still flickering through him, watching the play of emotions over Michael’s face. His expression is completely open; he looks up at Alex, radiant with love, and Alex can almost see himself reflected back in his pupils, looking just as radiant.

Then Michael grabs Alex’s hips and slams into him. He gasps with the force of it, throwing his head back as Michael comes; Alex can _feel_ the pulsing heat of him.

They collapse into a sticky, boneless embrace. Michael half-heartedly scrubs at the cum Alex left on his torso but gives up after a minute. Eventually they settle onto their sides, facing each other, as they catch their breath. Michael reaches for Alex’s hand and holds it between them.

“We didn’t use a condom,” Michael points out softly.

“I’m clean,” Alex offers, but a knot of dismay tightens in his stomach. He’s suddenly and acutely aware of Michael’s cum trickling out of his body, dripping down his leg.

“And I’m… well, impervious to human infections,” Michael says, and Alex accepts his tacit admission that he didn’t spend his year in space—Canada, that is, or some metaphysical combination of the two—practicing monkish celibacy. He’s in no position to object, after all.

“You never told me that before,” he says.

“Seemed kind of presumptuous.” Michael shrugs lazily. “‘I’m an alien, so by the way, I can fuck you bare. Wanna ride it, cowboy?’”

Alex snorts. “Right. And presumably you can’t give me Space AIDS…?”

“ _Space_ AIDS?” Michael looks offended.

“Just checking.” Alex squeezes his hand, and Michael squeezes back. “I liked it,” Alex tells him. “Feeling you.”

“Me too,” Michael says. “I wanna try it you in me, next time.” He gives Alex a sultry look. “While we’re on the subject of my superior biology…” His dick is already half hard again. “I’m a sex machine, baby. Almost reloaded.”

Alex groans as his own gives a feeble twitch. “Give me an hour. At least.”

As the sweat begins to dry, they shuffle closer again. Goose flesh ripples across Alex’s arms and Michael draws a blanket over them. It’s dark outside the airstream and Alex’s eyelids are growing heavy. “Tomorrow,” he says, blinking owlishly at Michael. “What are you gonna tell Max and Isobel? Liz?”

“The truth, I guess,” Michael says, grudgingly. “Or a version of it. Max’ll get pissed and blow out the power for a week…”

“Tell them you met David Bowie on the moon.”

“Mars. I met David Bowie on _Mars_. And Freddie on Mercury…” He sounds on the verge of sleep, but suddenly Alex remembers something important. He pushes himself up on one elbow.

“Michael?”

“Mm?” Michael caresses his cheek lightly, the whisper of a touch.

“I promise.”

“Promise what?”

“Everything,” Alex tells him, voice cracking, eyes filling. He’s glad it’s dark. “I promise. Always. I promise you.”

Michael’s thumb catches the tear that rolls down his cheek. “Only you,” he says roughly, warm breath fanning across Alex’s neck. “You—you’re the cosmos—the whole cosmos—for me now.”

“Cosmic, yeah,” Alex says, and kisses him. The chemical residue of acetone is bitter on his lips, but Michael kisses him back until the bitterness fades and it’s only them. Mid-kiss, Alex drifts into sleep.

In Michael’s arms, he dreams of satellites.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! My other stories for Michael & Alex are WHAT YOU BREAK IS WHAT YOU GET, BOYS KEEP SWINGING, and HALLO SPACEBOY. 
> 
> Songs referenced belong to Lou Reed, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, etc.


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